Many men have followed your theories about "domestic violence" and have come
to the conclusion that men like you cause more domestic violence than ten million mothers
on PMS.

Even researchers like you from Rhode Island must know about NIS which shows that
mothers kill children at a rate 60 times greater than the rate at which fathers kill them.
Why do you keep on omitting this point when addressing domestic violence? Do
you not consider DEAD children to be worthy of a discussion about domestic violence?
Are all these thousands of DEAD children this much less important to you than the
1,400 women you claim die from domestic violence each year? It's really hard to
imagine how a man could think this way, but evidently you do, so please explain.

The other thing we would like you to explain while you're at it is why, in all of your
years of research and study, you never seem to have grasped the dynamics of the marital
relationship. You always write as if though you really believe the little lady is
always all peaches and cream. You focus on the battering part as if though men just
jump up off their couch potato recliner and bash women for no reason at all.

Why is it that you don't seem to realize that the little ladies are telling the TRUTH
when they claim that they INITIATE

The highly publicized O.J. Simpson case has spawned a flurry of stories in local,
national, and international media, all focused on pieces of the domestic violence puzzle.
In fact, coverage of the case has become the battleground on which one of the most
controversial questions in the study of intimate violence is being debated: Is domestic
abuse a "war against women" or are men battered just as much as women?

In the media-frenzy replication of that debate, war against women stories are countered
with violence against men articles, opinion pieces, letters and broadcast reports. Groups
on both sides of the issue are jockeying for media attention and support of their
position.

Many feminists content that it is clear women are overwhelmingly the victims of
intimate violence and that there are few if any battered men. On the other hand,
self-described battered husbands, mens rights group members and some scholars maintain
that there are significant numbers of battered men, that battered men are indeed a social
problem worthy of attention and that there are as many male victims of violence as female.
The last claim is a significant distortion of well-grounded research data.

To even off the debate playing field it seems one piece of statistical evidence (that
women and men hit one another in roughly equal numbers) is hauled out from my 1985
research - and distorted - to prove the position on violence against men. However, the
critical rate of injury and homicide statistics provided in that same research are often
eliminated altogether, or reduced to a parenthetical statement saying that men typically
do more damage. The statement that men and women hit one another in roughly equal numbers
is true, however, it cannot be made in a vacuum without the qualifiers that a) women are
seriously injured at seven times the rate of men and b) that women are killed by partners
at more than two times the rate of men.

That women are perpetrators of intimate violence there can be no doubt. There is
consistent and reliable empirical evidence that women use violence toward their male
partners. The question of whether there are battered men and the prevalence of the problem
of the battering of men is more complex.

We know that there are two to four million women battered in the United States each
year. At least half these women fight back and defend themselves, and about 700 times last
year, women killed their husbands or partners.

In the majority of cases, the women act in response to physical or psychological
provocation or threats. Most use violence as a defensive reaction to violence. Some women
initiate violence because they know, or believe, that they are about to be attacked. A
smaller number of women, having been beaten and brutalized for months or years, seek
vengeance against a brutal partner. Despite Lorena Bobbits much publicized act least year,
the majority of violence women do not inflict significant injury on their partners: women
are typically smaller than their husbands and less skilled in using weapons.

Thus, when we look at injuries resulting from violence involving male and female
partners, it is categorically false to imply that there are the same number of battered
men as there are battered women. Research shows that nearly 90 percent of battering
victims are women and only about ten percent are men. Movie portrayals of the vengeful,
violent women notwithstanding (for example, in Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct), there
are very few women who stalk male partners or kill them and then their children in a
cataclysmic act of familicide. The most brutal, terrorizing and continuing pattern of
harmful intimate violence is carried out primarily by men.

Indeed, men are hit by their wives, they are injured, and some are killed. But, are all
men hit by women battered? No. Men who beat their wives, who use emotional abuse and
blackmail to control their wives, and are then hit or even harmed, cannot be considered
battered men. A battered man is one who is physically injured by a wife or partner and has
not physically struck or psychologically provoked her.

My estimate is that there are about 100,000 battered men in the United States each year
- a much smaller number than the two to four million battered women - but hardly trivial.

Despite the fact that indeed, there are battered men too, it is misogynistic to paint
the entire issue of domestic violence with a broad brush and make it appears as though men
are victimized by their partners as much as women. It is not a simple case of simple
numbers. The media, policy makers, and the public cannot simply ignore - or reduce to a
parenthetical status the outcomes of violence, which leave more than 1,400 women dead each
year and millions physically and/or psychologically scarred for life.

Richard J. Gelles is Director of the Family Violence Research Program, and a professor
of Sociology and Psychology at the University of Rhode Island. He has published
extensively on the topics of child abuse, wife abuse, and family violence. His most recent
books are: Intimate Violence (Touchstone, 1989); Physical Violence in American Families:
Risk Factors and Adaptions in 8,145 Families (Transaction Books, 1990); Intimate Violence
in Families, (Sage, 1990); and Current Controversies on Family Violence (Sage, 1993).